Really appreciate this thread, Steve. Not only is it a good explanation of things, but a necessary one as "compression" seems to have become such a dirty word---especially among many members here---that people run in fear at the mere mention of it. It's great for people to understand the good and necessary components of it as well.

Click to expand...

This is exactly the kind of response to this thread I dreaded. I knew it was gonna happen as soon as I read the op.

Now we can all smugly justify crap mastering like blue & lonesome because hey "compression is necessary"

Related to this is making sure that the vinyl cutting engineer gets the music well above the sound of the vinyl itself.

The guy who did the LP mastering for the recent 1-Step MoFi of Santana's Abraxas, Krieg Wunderlich, did the mastering a couple of years ago for the same company's 2-LP release of Patricia Barber's A Distortion Of Love. Unfortunately, it was cut too low for the quietest moments of the music. The sound of the vinyl, and I mean the basic whoosh, competes with the softest passages of the music. The result is that the start of the acoustic bass, the picking of the strings, gets lost (completely inaudible in the softest passages). And some delicate percussive shakers get sort of grayed out as their sound is barely above the sound of the vinyl, a sort of a white noise partially masks their sound. Barber's vocals at times are so soft, delicate, and deep in the soundstage that you can barely hear her over the sound of the vinyl.

In contrast, on the more compressed CD, which has also has the benefit of no background noise, you can clearly hear every nuance of every note.

On the other hand, the LP mastering is ultimately so much more musical than the CD. As long as the music rises well above the sound of the vinyl, which it does for 85% of the album, there is SO much more life to the album's music on vinyl vs. the music via the CD. On the CD, neither Barber's voice nor any of the other instruments are nearly as deep in the soundstage as they are on the vinyl. The expansiveness of the music on the LP is sort of breathtaking. The music goes from miniscule to absolutely huge at times as she and her group build and build and build. On the CD, the dynamics just don't go much anywhere. The music is more or less just there. It hits a wall and stays there.

Given the more expansive soundstage and the music's ability to breathe, the LP version just sounds more real -- as long as I'm listening to the louder tracks (which are most of them, but there softer moments...).

For curiosity's sake, I put on the AP 45rpm of Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood. The vinyl's background noise was the same as the Patricia Barber. But the music came through BLAM! It was so loud I had to greatly turn the volume down. Here was an LP that had clearly been cut louder, and playing through the album, I rarely even heard the vinyl once I turned down the volume of that record to a normal listening level.

So the potential pros and cons of compression, in a way, exemplified via the 2 different media releases of the same album.

Compression is a tool. In the hands of a good operator, it is crucial. Too much dynamic range on recordings is bad. Not enough, worse. There is a art/science/technique to making a good recording. The compressor; overused, bad, used correctly, perfection!

When music is mixed, human hands work the faders but the compressor is there to help.

I'd venture to say that 99% of all recorded music was created with a compressor/limiter.

When electric recording came in around 1925, the Western Electric microphone went to the cutter with a fixed-groove revolving beeswax disk, 80 RPM usually (standardized at 78 RPM around 1934.)

The music, of course, was recorded live, the cutting amplifier was only about 1 or 2 watts and the saturation of the tubes caused a pleasing compression that made it possible for a giant dance band to be recorded with only one microphone and mastered on the disk at full volume without overload distortion. You could hear the tuba in the back, the horns, drums, guitar, bass, reeds, vocal, everything with just one RCA microphone.

Why? Tubes really don't overload, they just compress when stressed. I've heard thousands of 78's from 1925 to the start of tape in 1949 and I've never heard any distortion on any of them. Some sound better than others, but the saturation of the tubes prevented any ugly odd order harmonics to screw anything up, even on a piano recording from 1925. (Compare that to the 25% piano distortion on the peaks during Bill Evans At The Village Vanguard!)

When cutting amps got bigger, more accurate in the 1930's, the Victor and Columbia engineers discovered that it was harder to control the sound of the music because it was becoming too dynamic. The saxes would be lost because the horns were three times as loud. More microphones were needed, causing the orchestras to sound unnatural, isolated. The pleasing saturation of a low power tube stage was needed to make it all gel. Thus, they found a way to make the tubes work against their nature, instead of amplifying, they de-amplified the sound. Compression via outboard compressor/limiters!

The first and best were the RCA Opto-limiters, using optical sound like in a movie studio and making it work in reverse.

Later units could choose (by operator switching) between compression and limiting. In most old recordings (and most new ones) compression is always in the circuit, reducing dynamic range during the music and the limiter part only comes into play after a certain level is reached. The RCA engineers decided that around 15 db of dynamic range (a hell of a lot, actually) was just about right for late 1930's big band recording. Both the compressor and limiter were used on an Artie Shaw or Benny Goodman recording, the limiting only kicking in during the loud brass passages.

"Why do we need this at all?" You ask me this all the time. Too much dynamic range is very unlifelike. In the concert hall, the sound bounces around and compresses nicely before it reaches your seat. Try listening to an orchestra OUTSIDE. Sounds like dead crap, right? You need the concert hall just like recordings need compression.

Understand? Let me think of another way to talk about it..

Well, think of a recording as a good Chili sauce that you're making for a party. You have the ingredients on the counter, chopped onions, tomato, seasonings, etc. In a multi-track recording, each instrument on a track can be considered in these terms. If you do, it will be easier to understand. The drums are onions, the bass, spice, the guitar, something else, and so on.

Now, you know that in order to make a good sauce, the ingredients need to be cooked and simmered to perfection for everything to blend together just right. Over done, bad, under done, you can taste each ingredient. Urggh.

The same goes for mixing music, but we cannot mix music without the fire to simmer the various instruments together. This is what the compressor does. It is the crucial step to get something to sound not like a bunch of separate things, but as a whole. Get me?

I've remixed a lot of stuff without compression and I cringe when I hear these today on the radio or wherever. They sound like band demos and not real recordings. Two hands can't control faders and dip something lightning fast, impossible but the compressor fuses it all together in such a good way (if used correctly) that you don't even realize it's working magic, you just know you like the sound.

Does this make sense to you?

BTW I typed all of this on my iPad, I'll try and correct typos when I have a chance. Questions, comments welcome.

Click to expand...

Thanks very much for taking the time to explain all of this, Steve. You said a lot about compression during recording and mixing, but can I ask for you to speak about about compression during mastering?

Really appreciate this thread, Steve. Not only is it a good explanation of things, but a necessary one as "compression" seems to have become such a dirty word---especially among many members here---that people run in fear at the mere mention of it. It's great for people to understand the good and necessary components of it as well.

Click to expand...

It's not necessarily compression itself that is the enemy - it's when too much digital compression is used with that hard digital limiting during the mastering process...that's when things start getting all ear-bleedy.

It's not necessarily compression itself that is the enemy - it's when too much digital compression is used with that hard digital limiting during the mastering process...that's when things start getting all ear-bleedy.

Click to expand...

Absolutely. Was just thanking Steve for making it clear to people that it is about finding the proper use and middle ground. Not believing any use of it whatsoever is undesirable

Thanks very much for taking the time to explain all of this, Steve. You said a lot about compression during recording and mixing, but can I ask for you to speak about about compression during mastering?

Click to expand...

Mastering what, vinyl or digital?

I don't use compression or limiting in mastering digital. In vinyl cutting there is usually a high freq. limiter going or else the cutter head would burn out on some stuff.. You cannot hear it working and in most cases it improves the sound of the vinyl.

Kevin Gray and I cut THEME FROM "SHAFT" from the original stereo tape at 45 RPM and we did it both ways, with the high freq. limiter on and with it off. In a blind home test we both preferred the version with the high freq. limiter.

That answer it?

When CD players with revolving trays came in, the loudness wars began, sadly. Brickwalling with digital limiting everything in sight, even if it was already squashed.

Thus, the audiophile labels were carving out a little territory using no limiting and good sounding tapes. A win for us, but we can't remaster everything. You're on your own for everything else.

Kevin Gray and I cut THEME FROM "SHAFT" from the original stereo tape at 45 RPM and we did it both ways, with the high freq. limiter on and with it off. In a blind home test we both preferred the version with the high freq. limiter.

Click to expand...

By the way, I used to sort of dismiss this tune a bit. I had my own big band, and had a killer arrangement of it based on one by trumpeter/big band leader, Maynard Ferguson. But when this 45rpm Analogue Productions 12" of "Theme from Shaft" came out, I bought it (Steve, I corresponded with you back then about having side 2 be 19 minutes long). This 45rpm shows off the TFS cut to be not only killer unto itself, but also showcases Isaac Haye's brilliant arrangement.

It's not only still available, but the price hasn't gone up since I bought it (unlike most of the other Analogue Productions products), retailing at $20.

So the Rolling Stones and Don Was forgot the concept of how to use compression for good and not evil ? I get it now.

Click to expand...

I'm sure the tape that Don handed over sounded fantastic. It's the mastering with a bunch of hard digital limiting, and maybe that's what they asked Mr. Marcussen to do...I don't know, I can't speak for him.

Try the mono vinyl of the 40th anniversary reissue of The Ramones' 1st album for a textbook example of too much compression, badly done. Horrible, shrill and just plain unlistenable.

Click to expand...

Not to take this thread off-topic, but if you want to hear how good this album can sound, download the 24/192 hi-res 2014 Rhino remaster from HDTracks. $26 is kinda steep, but it's the best-sounding mastering to date.

Not to take this thread off-topic, but if you want to hear how good this album can sound, download the 24/192 hi-res 2014 Rhino remaster from HDTracks. $26 is kinda steep, but it's the best-sounding mastering to date.

Click to expand...

Does is really cost so much more to master an album well or to hi-Rez than it does to master it otherwise?

Too much dynamic range is unnatural sounding, just sounds wrong. The vocal is too loud, too soft, this or that, it's hard to get a good balance. Mixing is very difficult. Compression helps make it sound natural (as funky hard as that is to believe).

Click to expand...

Whenever I read people making comments about compression I can't help but think of Genesis's Nursery Cryme. I love the album, but the extreme dynamic range drives me crazy. I live in an apartment and in order to hear the quietest passages I have to turn up the volume but most definitely have to turn it back down for rest of the record. The same goes for the Deutsche Grammophon record of Tchaikovsy's Nutcracker Suite as recorded by The Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Up and down, up and down.

I can understand compression being used to too large a degree, but not being used when it really is needed is just as bad. I makes listening to music a pain in the posterior orifice (pelvic region).